In the field of the practical application of the invention, such as in printing clusters -printing areas- established on a continuous support band in which the clusters define transverse and longitudinal alignments, evenly separated or otherwise, printing machines are used in which the aforementioned continuous band to be printed moves longitudinally under a fixed plate, on which in turn moves transversally a moving carriage, aided by the corresponding motor, which carries a cassette feeding the thermal transfer ribbon that passes the printing area and is collected at a destination cassette, which is also motorised to pull on the ribbon when the printing must take place. Thus, the thermal transfer ribbon advances when the moving carriage is placed opposite the printing clusters or areas corresponding to the labels or elements involved, and stops at the spaces defined between said clusters, all of this governed by the printing machine programming system.
Hitherto, in printing machines of this type the carriage actuation motor is mounted on the casing and the thermal transfer ribbon actuation motor is mounted on the carriage, with the resulting increase in mass and thus inertia of the carriage, implying a limitation of the operation speed as if the speed is increased the reliability of the carriage position is diminished.
On another hand, it is obvious that to obtain higher speeds greater size motors must be used, which will occupy more space on the carriage, also arming the operation of the machine as this requires disposing smaller ribbon feeding and collection cassettes, and thus shorter ribbons, shortening the machine's autonomy time.